Motherly Advice
It’s laundry day here on Tumblr and I am beginning to hear the confused whispers in the wind. You have your binder. It’s great. You wear it every day. You’re really freakin’ tired of handwashing it in the sink when nobody’s looking. A lot of people seem pretty confused about how you wash a binder!
So I emailed my mom:
“hi mom!
Do you think you could do me a big giant favor and write about washing binders for my tumblr? =D you don’t have to if you don’t want to but I think people would get a lot out of it and plus it’d be adorable. Thanks!
Hows stuff at home?
Love you!”
And she replied: “It’s really not complicated: just wash it like any washable delicates—in cold water on gentle cycle with mild detergent like Woolite. Hang to dry.
You can print that.”
Okay so obviously my mom doesn’t speak Teenage Boy.
When I lived at home, Mommy Dearest would throw my binders in with Sister’s bras and all the nylon shorts and H&M t-shirts- y'know, things that tend to fall apart if you don’t treat them with love. She washed them cold and on the “delicate” setting (yeah, washing machines have settings. Crazy, right?), used the Woolite instead of the Tide (yup. supermoms buy two different kinds of detergent), and then hung it all up to dry.
But that method only works if 1. you have the coolest mother of all time and 2. you have enough delicates to do a load regularly.
The Solutions to the Above Problems:
1. If your mother isn’t the coolest of all time and you’re living at home (or in any situation where you don’t feel comfortable tossing your binder in the wash), you can either handwash your binders (use the mild detergent if you can snag it, the regular detergent if you can snag that, and a bar of soap in other cases): fill up the sink with cold water and a splash of detergent, scrunch and swish your binder for a few minutes, then drain and rinse until all the soap is gone. Even if you’re worried about discreetness, find a way to hang it up to dry. Put it on a plastic or wire hanger and tuck it in a corner of your closet if you must.
2. If you don’t have enough delicates to do an entire load of them, it’s totally okay to throw your binders in the regular washing machine! It’s not the Supermom method, but like, Supermom makes homemade cookies and we buy them at Wal-mart and at the end of the day we all have cookies. Just make sure you use cold water. Also, don’t use anything rougher than a standard wash. Honestly, I do all of my laundry- jeans, t-shirts, binder, socks, undies, packing strap- in one cold load. The only thing I handwash is H&M t-shits because seriously, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but those things are made of rice paper.
A note for College Kids and Laundromat-Goers:
I don’t trust laundromat washers with my binders (or anything that’s not tough like jeans or shirts or socks or undies), so now that I’m at school using finicky industrial-grade washers that only have hot/cold settings, I’m washing my binders and packing strap in the sink. All of them need to air dry, but if I wasn’t out to my roommates I’d make room to hang them in the closet on a plastic hanger instead of in the bathroom.
Stay excellent!
~Zev
